Web Only / Features » January 17, 2013

Christopher Hitchens Stands Trial

What emerges is a picture of Hitchens as an intellectually lazy poseur and a huffy racist—a man who, despite the remarkable breadth of his reading, “often lacked depth” and was “either unable or unwilling to cope with the sorts of complex ideas that he occasionally attempted to criticize.”

By the time of his death in December 2011, Christopher Hitchens had built a status perhaps outstripping that of any contemporary intellectual: His passing was considered worthy of the New York Times’ front page, and he was mourned by Tony Blair, Sean Penn, David Frum and Patrick Cockburn, among others. It is from this altitude that he is yanked down by Richard Seymour in the clever, incisive Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens. The slim critique of Hitchen’s ouevre focuses on his engagement with British politics and literature, his work on religion and his double-armed embrace of American imperialism.

Though only 35, Seymour has made a name for himself as a thoughtful political analyst, notably in his book The Liberal Defence of Murder, on how the language of humanitarianism helps camouflage imperialism, and on his blog Lenin’s Tomb, an indispensible source for analysis of neoliberalism, the War on Terror and Islamophobia. Ironically, Seymour’s literary style often evokes that of Hitchens at his best. Some of Seymour’s turns of phrase are positively Hitchensian, such as his opening salvo in the introduction to Unhitched: “This is unabashedly a prosecution. And if it must be conducted with the subject in absentia, as it were, it will not be carried out with less vim as a result.”

And when writing in the prosecutorial mode, Seymour has, like his subject, a gift for reeling off an entire firing squad’s worth of bullets in a single sentence: “Hitchens was a propagandist for the American empire, a defamer of its opponents, and someone who suffered the injury this did to his probity and prose as so much collateral damage.” Seymour is also a Trotskyist, as Hitchens once was. But there the comparisons end, because Seymour is plainly a caliber of intellectual that his subject is not.

Accuracy, Seymour demonstrates, was not a major hang-up for Hitchens. Hitchens referred to Hugo Chávez as “the General” even though the Venezuelan never held that rank; said that Muammar Gaddafi turned over a “stockpile of WMD” although Libya never possessed even one such weapon; claimed in February 2003 that an invasion of Iraq would be justified because Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s presence in that country demonstrated a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda even though Zarqawi was an opponent of al-Qaeda at the time and it wasn’t clear that he was in Iraq at all; and asserted that Tunisians revolted against the Ben Ali regime because they did not have to fear violent repression on the same scale that Iranian protestors face despite the fact that 224 Tunisians were killed in their uprising as compared to the 72 killed in the Iranian dictatorship’s crushing of the Green Movement in 2009.

What emerges is a picture of Hitchens as an intellectually lazy poseur and a huffy racist—a man who, despite the remarkable breadth of his reading, “often lacked depth” and was “either unable or unwilling to cope with the sorts of complex ideas that he occasionally attempted to criticize.” Here Seymour adduces Hitchens’ gross misreading of Edward Said’s Orientalism, his travestying of Marx’s view of history, and his crude theological discussions: for example, Hitchens interprets the biblical Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as divine endorsement for the murder of children, an unpersuasive claim given that the story had precisely the opposite function in the historical context in which it was written and received.

Hitchens’ record on intellectual honesty is also rather blotchy. Seymour is not the first to note this; he points to John Barrell, who argued in the London Review of Books that sections of Hitchens’ Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man were lifted from other sources without proper attribution. Seymour contends that Hitchens’ The Missionary Position was a re-write of research done by an Indian author who does not receive credit in the original hardback, and demonstrates convincingly that Hitchens’ essay “Kissinger’s War Crimes in Indochina” borrows from Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s The Political Economy of Human Rights without crediting the authors.

If Hitchens was a serial plagiarist who failed to get even the simplest of facts right, was allergic to nuance, and made no scholarly contributions, one might reasonably conclude that he ought to be ignored, and that a reader’s time and Seymour’s considerable talents be put to better use. But Hitchens matters precisely because of the inverse relationship that the quality of his work has to his status. His career reveals much about the function of the public intellectual.

The familiar narrative of Hitchens’ career has it that he made an abrupt turn from Left to Right in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but Seymour complicates this, noting that traces of Hitchens’ sympathy for empire could be detected much earlier in his career. As an example, Seymour cites Hitchens’ 1992 claim that European colonization of the Americas “deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto.” While Seymour notes that Hitchens did some important writing prior to his ideological shift, particularly in his opposition to the 1991 Gulf War, he says too little about the high-quality work Hitchens did in the 1980s on Palestine and Reagan’s wars in Central America.

That said, Hitchens’ later years and the enormous celebrity he enjoyed during that period are a case study of just how handsome the rewards are for those willing and able to serve as attack dogs for the dominant powers of their place and time. Hitchens’ main service to the American elite was to employ a combination of innuendo and character assassination to cast aspersion on virtually every high-profile figure critical of American foreign policy after 9/11—a roster that includes Julian Assange, Noam Chomsky, George Galloway, Michael Moore, Harold Pinter, Edward Said, Cindy Sheehan, Oliver Stone and Gore Vidal.

Hitchens could never have amassed such a large following—and perhaps more importantly, such a powerful following—had he not so entirely embraced American power and its corresponding ideologies after 9/11. Would Hitchens have been invited on as many talk shows if, rather than writing fawning biographies of safely institutionalized figures like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, he had taken as his exemplary subjects two others he professed to admire even near the end of his life, C.L.R. James and Rosa Luxemburg? If, instead of levying facile criticisms of organized religion primarily at the United States’ enemies, Hitchens had selected neoliberal capitalism for his most ferocious late-career critiques, is it likely that 60 Minutes would have profiled him when he was ill with cancer, or that his audience would have been extended to readers of Newsweek, much less the Weekly Standard?

Seymour’s book makes clear that Hitchens provides the best evidence one can find for Chomsky’s hypothesis that as intellectuals achieve increasing degrees of power, “the inequities of the society will recede from vision, the status quo will seem less flawed, and the preservation of order will become a matter of transcendent importance.” Nor is there a more perfect embodiment than Hitchens of Said’s argument that “Nothing disfigures the intellectual’s public performance as much as … patriotic bluster, and retrospective and self-dramatizing apostasy.”

To put the matter another way, consider Seymour’s justifiable revulsion at Hitchens’ revealing shifts in political friendships after 9/11: “It is one thing to sell out Sidney Blumenthal to the GOP, but to exchange Edward Said for Ahmed Chalabi? To smear Noam Chomsky yet endear oneself to Paul Wolfowitz?” Hitchens’ is the logic of an intellectual opportunist, of a man who has figured out the benefits of taking a clear stance with the established order: Relationships with Said and Chomsky will impress in certain circles, but they won’t get you the ear of the President of the United States or help you become chummy with the Prime Minister of England.

Hitchens was what Antonio Gramsci called an “organic intellectual”: a person who claims to speak for the interests of either a hegemonic or counter-hegemonic class. And, despite Hitchens’ protestations and pretensions of working-class sympathies, Seymour’s book makes clear Hitchens sided manifestly with the ruling class, particularly those factions of it that are concerned with foreign affairs. The most concrete expression of this was probably his joining the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which was initiated and headed by Bruce Jackson, a former vice president of Lockheed Martin. However, the primary task that Hitchens took up for America’s elite was to attempt to de-legitimize its opponents. In addition to his vicious but generally insubstantial attacks on critics of American empire, this took the form of him repeatedly asserting that all anti-capitalist movements were dead and that market forces are the world’s truly revolutionary force; of his sliming the alter-globalization movement and his justifying Arizona’s racist immigration laws (though these last two are among the few points that Seymour overlooks).

Hitchens thus stands in contrast to an organic intellectual of the counter-hegemonic kind—one who practices what Chomsky sees as the responsibility of intellectuals in Western democracies: to utilize “the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.”

By no means is Seymour the first to call Hitchens a hack and a sell-out. In the aftermath of his full-throttled embrace of gunboat diplomacy post-9/11, unmasking Hitchens became almost a cottage industry for Left intellectuals. Among the finest of these are Tariq Ali’s chapter on his former comrade in Bush in Babylon, Clare Brandabur’s “Hitchens Smears Edward Said,” Norman Finkelstein’s “Hitchens as Model Apostate,” Glenn Greenwald’s counter-obituary, and more work by Alexander Cockburn and Terry Eagleton than I could list. But Unhitched offers a more thorough and in-depth discrediting of Hitchens than anything previously published. And in doing so, Seymour has made an important contribution to understanding the political role of the intellectual celebrity in our time.

"Guest" writes a nuanced defense of Hitchens. Your reply is to his opening sentence, which was unrelated to Hitchens's actual arguments, followed by a litany of character attacks? Not a hard contest to see who made the more convincing argument.

Posted by Aaron Clarke on 2015-03-23 02:06:56

"His reasons were largely the same as the anti-communists, to prevent the spread of some or other ideology that will destroy the west."Don't tell ME that you're actually comparing anti-communists to those who take a stand against radical Islam. There is legitimate reason to oppose a minority that kills hundreds daily; let's just imagine the death toll were the size of that minority to rise...

"The fact that Hitchens literally needed to be tortured to finally admit that torture is torture is further evidence for Seymour's critique."This is the stupidest mischaracterization of the events; I can't actually believe I just read that. It was not that Hitchens COULDN'T imagine the sensation. It's simply testing a hypothesis. Let's imagine Hitch writing the article without having undergone the experience. He would instantly get critiques saying "Well how can you really know, Christopher? You've never experienced it." By having done it himself, it adds credibility. It's not as if he was sitting about going "hm, I wonder if it really is torture..guess I'll have to go find out."

Posted by Aaron Clarke on 2015-03-23 01:59:49

I didn't agree with everything Hitchens said; nor do I agree with everything written or said by Chomsky or Said. I think that Hitchens' main thrust was against religious fundamentalism of any stripe, whether it be Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, and he saw them all as threats to freedom of expression. Too many on the left have been critical of Jewish and Christian repression but have given a free pass to dictatorial Muslims for fear of being called racist or "Orientalists." He defended Salman Rushdie and the publishers of the Mohammed cartoons at a time when many others failed to do so. Therefore, although I disagree with Hitchens about some matters, I applaud his defense of free speech and excoriation of oppressive religion.

Posted by Marian Hennings on 2013-03-10 20:37:36

Labeling someone a pseudo-intellectual coward from behind your computer serves as a perfect example of what a chest-beating keyboard warrior is. If you don't like Hitchens, fine. If you're a true intellectual, please write and publish something to enlighten all of us bottom-feeders.

I think that your hatred of Hitchens and Harris is misplaced, and your hatred of their fans is most definitely misplaced. To call people who enjoy their works "the bottom feeders of the world" shows what a warped view of the world you hold.

That said, I miss the real Bill Hicks.

Posted by Zampano on 2013-01-30 14:47:42

"in fact"?

Posted by kcg45 on 2013-01-29 05:16:10

Hitchens always struck me as the kind of pundit/thinker who attracts thick headed contrarians, especially of the libertarian type. He was a political "insult comic" with very little to offer. After you stripped away the verbosity and the strained "edginess" there wasn't much there, there.

Posted by DapperDamp on 2013-01-28 14:18:31

There doesn't seem to have been a finished weapon. My suggestion is that the principle of charity dictates that we can (not must) understand Hitchens as referring to components for WMD, rather than an extant weapon. Given that the quote is drawn from a popular website, and not a DoD briefing or Jane's, this interpretation seems plausible to me. If it is plausible, then Shupak is hair-splitting for rhetorical effect, and creating the impression that Hitchens was deluded on this point.

And seeing as stating the obvious is sometimes necessary in conversations like these, nobody should understand my defending Hitchens on this one point as any sort of endorsement of his politics, or a condemnation of Shupak's assessment of those politics in general.

Posted by Jacques Rousseau on 2013-01-28 13:03:56

"And of course everybody knows that Hitchens got it wrong with Iraq but..."

Yes, of course, BUT...

Yours and Hitchens kind of BUT cost tens of thousands of lives.

Posted by Pete Needham on 2013-01-28 12:59:14

"Hitchens was anything, he was a master wordsmith." Reminds me of Jed Clampett talking about Jethro, " That boy ken shuurrre cypher!"

Posted by Pete Needham on 2013-01-28 12:56:47

"Seymour isn't fit to lick Hitchen's boots."

Unlike yourself?

Posted by Pete Needham on 2013-01-28 12:55:01

So where was the weapon itself?

Posted by Pete Needham on 2013-01-28 12:47:52

The fact that the western press is UNANIMOUS in mentioning islamo-fascism, and SILENT about Judeo- or Christo-fascism, shows me that you're nothing but a parrot.

Posted by Pete Needham on 2013-01-28 12:44:59

Hitchens spent the last 10 years of his life enabling and defending the Kissengers of the present day. His reasons were largely the same as the anti-communists, to prevent the spread of some or other ideology that will destroy the west. Don't tell me that you can't see the parallels.

The fact that Hitchens literally needed to be tortured to finally admit that torture is torture is further evidence for Seymour's critique. Hitchens was so intellectually shallow that he couldn't correctly imagine the sensation of waterboarding. He needed to experience it first hand before he could come to a conclusion.

Posted by muffinpowertop on 2013-01-28 12:38:32

Neither of those quotes is evidence of "admiration".

There is a huge difference between quoting someone's views on a topic to bolster an argument you're making and "admiring" them. One could quote Fidel Castro to lend support for the claim that Cubans despised Batista or that US intervention against Cuba was destructive and counter productive without it rising to "admiration" of the man or of any of his other policies, actions or opinions.

Posted by muffinpowertop on 2013-01-28 12:19:28

'because Seymour is plainly a caliber of intellectual that his subject is not'.

Should we just take your word for it ? is your 'intellectual caliber' enough to discern the greater intellectual ?

Maybe if this guy had made his criticism while he was alive we could have known, but how convenient that it comes out just now that he is gone...

Calling Chavez a general ? he read the Abraham story out of context ? Thats the 'intellectual caliber' you were talking about because you got those 2 examples wrong.

And of course everybody knows that Hitchens got it wrong with Iraq but even then one can understand his reasoning, or you didn't notice the kurd flag on his lapel ?

Posted by Pepe Chen on 2013-01-28 12:13:23

Oooohhh, another Hitchens fanboy scorned. Just like the chest-beating keyboard warrior named Hitchens, I'm sure you've served exactly zero days fighting the wars for "human progress and liberty". You haven't because like Hitchens, you're a pseudo-intellectual coward. So, either man-up and fight the wars for "human progress and liberty" yourself, or p-off. The world is better off without pseudo-intellectual phonies like the abysmal Hitchens, or the even more pathetic Sam Harris. They're bad enough, but fanboys like you are the bottom feeders of the world.

Posted by Bill Hicks on 2013-01-28 11:59:46

As expected, your blind fanboy hero-worship of Hitchens disables your reading comprehension. The author even notes that this is one of many take-downs of Hitchens, though the most thorough. So you see, your comment is already devoid of fact, like much of Hitchens pseudo-intellectual babble. It's amazing how many morons are swayed by a British accent with a boozy tone. Pathetic.

Posted by Bill Hicks on 2013-01-28 11:54:08

Ha ha.

Posted by Charles Frith on 2013-01-28 10:33:27

I like George Galloway. He's got balls.

Posted by Charles Frith on 2013-01-28 10:32:49

There's no question that on the most important moral issue of his life Hitchens sold out to the Neocon Zionist war agenda but to take a binary view of his life is myopic. He was at his best brilliant and at his worst inexplicably callous to innocent human life. It's foolish to ignore his best talks on Youtube There are many gems there.

Posted by Charles Frith on 2013-01-28 10:25:27

Richard Seymour was a major critic of Hitchens while he was alive, and has published articles in journals and books regarding him.

Posted by TimeandtheRani on 2013-01-26 20:44:41

Anti-fascism, brilliant. Works great when you're organising a Billy Bragg gig, turns into a fucking nightmare when you're invading other countries. Feel free to try and distinguish between a principle and a catastrophe. The pro-war left man.... blithering idiots who try their best to pretend the last decade never happened. It's not September 12th anymore, you're not really allowed to act like invading Afghanistan and Iraq are good ideas. Good god.

Posted by TimeandtheRani on 2013-01-26 20:42:56

If you love Hitchens so much, how come you don't know his fucking name?

Posted by TimeandtheRani on 2013-01-26 20:40:50

Excellent. Any more recent quotes? One could obviously pull up the quotes from the 70s from Hitchens praising Saddam Hussein, but obviously nobody would care because it would be irrelevant. Same principle though.

Posted by TimeandtheRani on 2013-01-26 20:39:20

The Hitchens of 1993 would absolutely have seen the cynical games of Gadaffi, Bush and Blair at this time for what they were. The Hitchens of 2004 knew them too, they just didn't fit the fiction he decided he wanted to write about.

Posted by TimeandtheRani on 2013-01-26 20:37:34

A word comes to mind - yes, that's it. Tripe! The "intellectually lazy" claim, that is. Much of the rest is roundly agreed to be true. Sadly, the absurdity of that particular piece of bombast diminishes the credibility of the other arguments. Love him, hate him, or both - if Hitchens was anything, he was a master wordsmith. Arguably nonpareil in his chosen genre. For me, the attacks on him - justified or not - by lesser writers - perhaps ironically nearly all of those who have chosen to criticize him in death - come across like vultures trying to nourish themselves from the demise of more powerful animal.

Posted by Jim Shapiro on 2013-01-25 13:40:53

You go right ahead..

Posted by Tony Prost on 2013-01-25 10:29:37

Glenn Greenwald wrote----

The day after Jerry Falwell died, Hitchens went on CNN and scorned what he called “the empty life of this ugly little charlatan,” saying: ”I think it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.” As I said, those demanding that Hitchens not be criticized in death are invoking a warped etiquette standard on his behalf that is not only irrational, but is one he himself vigorously rejected.

Posted by valles on 2013-01-25 02:25:27

Please. I have read both authors. "...there the comparisons end, because Seymour is plainly a caliber of intellectual that his subject is not...." Seymour isn't fit to lick Hitchen's boots. Maybe after he has written something useful himself he can be considered an intellectual, and later after writing many useful works he might be considered in Hitchen's league. Not now. Not even close.

Posted by Mike B on 2013-01-24 22:30:31

Man, this guy makes me want to go jack off.

Posted by Donovan Moore on 2013-01-24 21:32:23

Hitchens was also a great admirer of George Orwell...however, based on my readings of Orwell, I don't think the admiration would have been mutual. Orwell wasn't vicious, as Hitchens too often was, and while Orwell was vehemently opposed to any totalitarianism, he remained steadfast in his belief and advocacy of democratic Socialism.

Posted by Byard Pidgeon on 2013-01-24 18:14:47

Bravo! Well said!

Posted by San Fran Bud on 2013-01-24 15:52:53

Sorry but it will take more then one slim hack job to take down a master's ouevre. It is especially unfortunate that Shupak does not know the definition of the word “defame” to which truth is the “Grand Defense”. Obviously none skewered argued defamation or they'd have sued. They did not sue because, like Kissinger, they would not and could not, withstand cross-examination or dare take an oath and suffer impeachment and further disclosure.

Writing under pressure as Hitch usually did I'd fully expect some inaccuracy here and there but a few weak trees can not bring down a forest. Hitchens' reference to Chavez as “the General” was clearly a pun no one intended to be taken literally - give us a break! Call Hitch what you want but “intellectually lazy” just can't stick. As to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, Seymour begs the question or just doesn't get it. In fact it was a divine endorsement for the murder of children and the only reason Abraham stayed his lunatic hand was not because of personal conscience but because he was on further orders from the same monster. The question posed to him was obedience to God even if that meant slaughtering his own son like a goat. Asked and answered! And Norman Finkelstein is the last wackjob any writer should cite for credibility. LOL! Finally providing a litany of cranks whom Hitch smacked down with lightening precision hardly disproves Hitch but only demonstrates why his detractors trembled.

Posted by Francoise Arouete on 2013-01-24 15:29:17

How many people made these accusations and comments while Hitchens was alive and in a position to respond? (I'm not saying nobody did - I'm simply asking.)

Posted by tomfodw on 2013-01-24 14:42:36

Irony police: it is not ironic that the author mimics Hitchens' prose. Or tries to, as it were. The opening salvo is so much bad writing, it hurts seeing it compared to the best of Hitchens.

Posted by Mark Erickson on 2013-01-24 12:34:09

The Vietnam Syndrome in which Hitchens documents the legacy of American use of Agent Orange and Believe Me: It's Torture, a piece where Hitchens actually submits himself to waterboarding as a research tool should be enough alone to disprove Seymour's hack job. And what of his dogged and largely under-appreciated decades long quest to hold Henry Kissinger accountable for his many war crimes? Is that the work of a journalist transforming into a neocon mouthpiece? I'm sorry, but a very good case could be made that the loss of Christopher Hitchens has rid the warmongers and the chickenhawks of one of their greatest adversaries in the press.

Posted by Ben Quick on 2013-01-24 11:37:55

Hitchens may have been a hack and a sell-out, but he was a drunk, something I tried to point out in a letter to Steve Kroft after a "60 Minutes" interview. Some people may minimize his drinking, but I will not be one of them. His nastiness and narrow-mindedness have their genesis there.

Posted by Frank McEvoy on 2013-01-23 16:30:21

"Seymour is plainly a caliber of intellectual that his subject is not."

from Bertrand Russell: "A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

does mister Shupak have something other than book reports and blog screeds to point to, to indicate he is capable of distinguishing a greater intellect from a lesser one?

Posted by misanthropope on 2013-01-21 23:36:50

OK: does the woring clas of the west (or anywhere else, come to that), have the right to defed itself against islamo-fascism? Should we learn a lession from the Algerians?

Yes or no?

That's the question that the dishonest charlatan Seymour avoids answering. but the record of his organisation (before he fell out with it), the SWP, speaks for itself. They support the islamofascists.

Posted by Jock Haston on 2013-01-21 21:05:37

One thing you can bet money on. If someone starts out a retort with the phrase, "so, let me get this straight", you can be sure that what follows will be anything but straight.

Posted by James R. Olson on 2013-01-21 20:28:47

A centrifuge is not a WMD. A weapons program is not a WMD. There is a vast difference between 'a stockpile of WMD' and its less literal interpretations such as 'a stockpile of components of an incomplete nuclear weapons program'.

I think Shupak and Seymour are correct in calling it inaccurate, although Jacques is right in saying that it wasn't completely incorrect either - there is evidence that Gaddafi was in the process of producing a WMD.

The WMD claim was not central to Hitchens' argument. It might be a minor point to be concerned about, considering the rest of the arguments in the book.

Posted by Kent Solomon on 2013-01-21 15:06:43

"Accuracy, Seymour demonstrates, was not a major hang-up for Hitchens. Hitchens ... said that Muammar Gaddafi turned over a “stockpile of WMD” although Libya never possessed even one such weapon", says Shupak. Speaking of accuracy:

January 27, 2004: U.S. officials airlift about 55,000 pounds of documents and components from Libya’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs to the United States. The nuclear-related material includes uranium hexafluoride (the feedstock for centrifuges), two complete second-generation centrifuges from Pakistan, and additional centrifuge parts, equipment, and documentation.

"Hitchens interprets the biblical Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as divine endorsement for the murder of children, an unpersuasive claim given that the story had precisely the opposite function in the historical context in which it was written and received."

Really? Surely he'd have quoted Hosea 13:16, 1 Samuel 15:3 or Psalms 137:8-9. Or how about Jephthah in Judges 11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... (notice this is a cartoon: clearly this shows my argument is invalid) What's this "historical context" in which child killing is condemned by the OT but the invention of modern theologians in response to modern morality? Who, exactly, has "given" what you suggest?

Posted by PERSON on 2013-01-21 08:38:58

Here you are. Please don't be so lazy or defensive. Chomsky is not god and Chalabi is not a devil; they're just men like Hitchens.

2. Here's Noam Chomsky writing in his 1992 book Deterring Democracy:

Despite its victory, Washington did not quite achieve "the best of all worlds," because no suitable clone of the Beast of Baghdad had yet been found. Needless to say, not everyone shared the Washington-media conception of "the best of all worlds." Well after hostilities ended, the Wall Street Journal broke ranks and offered space to an authentic representative of the Iraqi democratic opposition, Ahmad Chalabi. He described the outcome as "the worst of all possible worlds" for the Iraqi people, whose tragedy is "awesome."

And again in his book Year 501:

The war policy was also strongly opposed by the population in the region. The Iraqi democratic opposition, always rebuffed by Washington (hence the press), opposed US policy throughout: the pre-August 1990 support for the Iraqi dictator, the refusal to explore peaceful means, and finally the tacit support for Saddam Hussein as he crushed the Shi'ite and Kurdish rebellions. One leading spokesman, banker Ahmad Chalabi, who described the outcome of the war as "the worst of all possible worlds" for the Iraqi people, attributed the US stand to its traditional policy of "supporting dictatorships to maintain stability."

So, let me get this straight, because Seymour doesn't hold the insane view that the "West" should try to kill everyone who acts out against it, that makes him an intellectual pygmy in comparison to bloodthirsty Hitchens?

Posted by John Drinkwater on 2013-01-19 16:29:31

Really? Where? Provide us the data.

Posted by John Drinkwater on 2013-01-19 16:25:53

Seymour is an intellectual pygmy in comparison to Hitchens. One issuue alone illustrates this: where does Seymour (a member of the SWP that once allied with George Galloway) stand on Islamic fundamentalism? He (Seymour) doesn't tell us, and he won't. Because, fundamentally, he believes it's progressive, but he's too much of an intellectual coward and charlatan to come out with it openly. Not only is Seymour a dishonest coward, but he's also onte wrong side in terms of human progress and liberty. Hitchens, for all his faults, was on the right (ie progressive) side. Seymour represents all that's wrong with the relativist pseudo-"left".

Posted by Jock Haston on 2013-01-19 14:47:56

Mr. Seymour and Mr. Shupak might be interested to note that Noam Chomsky is a published admirer of Ahmad Chalabi. Perhaps their scholarship is not as careful as they claim?

Posted by Foxtrot on 2013-01-19 09:47:31

Another interesting thing is that Hitchens sold out knowing full well that he used to lambast people like Norman Podhoretz for selling out. He became the very man he had affected to despise. He chose his appetites (money, booze, influence, attention) over his conscience. I suspect this is because he ultimately was a rather shallow thinker, and he knew it. If he had tried to keep it real like his betters Chomsky and Cockburn, he ran the serious risk of being exposed as a lightweight.